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Sesame Street
Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) until June 2000) and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. The series premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy,Linton, Caroline. "'Sesame Street' Turns 45: 14 Most Controversial Moments." AM New York. November 2014. Accessed July 20, 2017. http://www.amny.com/entertainment/sesame-street-turns-45-14-most-controversial-moments-1.9601111 and high viewership; it has aired on the U.S.'s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016. Reception 'Ratings' When Sesame Street premiered in 1969, it aired on only 67.6% of American televisions, but it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, which totaled 1.9 million households. By the show's tenth anniversary in 1979, nine million American children under the age of 6 were watching Sesame Street daily. According to a 1993 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, out of the show's 6.6 million viewers, 2.4 million kindergartners regularly watched it. 77% of preschoolers watched it once a week, and 86% of kindergartners and first- and second-grade students had watched it once a week before starting school. The show reached most young children in almost all demographic groups. The show's ratings significantly decreased in the early 1990s, due to changes in children's viewing habits and in the television marketplace. The producers responded by making large-scale structural changes to the show. By 2006, Sesame Street had become "the most widely viewed children's television show in the world", with 20 international independent versions and broadcasts in over 120 countries. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old. In 2008, it was estimated that 77 million Americans had watched the series as children. By the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth-most-popular children's show on television. 'Influence' As of 2001, there were over 1,000 research studies regarding Sesame Street s efficacy, impact, and effect on American culture. The CTW solicited the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to conduct summative research on the show. ETS's two "landmark" summative evaluations, conducted in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that the show had a significant educational impact on its viewers. These studies have been cited in other studies of the effects of television on young children. Additional studies conducted throughout Sesame Street s history demonstrated that the show continued to have a positive effect on its young viewers. Lesser believed that Sesame Street research "may have conferred a new respectability upon the studies of the effects of visual media upon children". He also believed that the show had the same effect on the prestige of producing shows for children in the television industry. Historian Robert Morrow, in his book Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television, which chronicled the show's influence on children's television and on the television industry as a whole, reported that many critics of commercial television saw Sesame Street as a "straightforward illustration for reform". Les Brown, a writer for Variety, saw in Sesame Street "a hope for a more substantial future" for television. Morrow reported that the networks responded by creating more high-quality television programs, but that many critics saw them as "appeasement gestures". According to Morrow, despite the CTW Model's effectiveness in creating a popular show, commercial television "made only a limited effort to emulate CTW's methods", and did not use a curriculum or evaluate what children learned from them. By the mid-1970s commercial television had abandoned their experiments with creating better children's programming. Other critics hoped that Sesame Street, with its depiction of a functioning, multicultural community, would nurture racial tolerance in its young viewers. It was not until the mid-1990s that another children's television educational program, Blue's Clues, used the CTW's methods to create and modify their content. The creators of Blue's Clues were influenced by Sesame Street, but wanted to use research conducted in the 30 years since its debut. Angela Santomero, one of its producers, said, "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further". Critic Richard Roeper said that perhaps one of the strongest indicators of the influence of Sesame Street has been the enduring rumors and urban legends surrounding the show and its characters, especially those concerning Bert and Ernie. One popular rumor points to Bert and Ernie being gay, as revealed by Mark Saltzman, one of the show's writers. In response, Sesame Street firmly denies the allegation. 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